ExaGrid Delivers Superior Scalability and Tight Integration with Leading Backup Applications
After considering products from both ExaGrid and Dell EMC Data Domain, Township High School District 113 purchased a dual- site ExaGrid disk-based backup system with data deduplication based on discussions with other school districts and vendors. Data is replicated between the two sites in case it is needed for disaster recovery.
“We spoke with several other school districts in our area who use ExaGrid, and they gave the system rave reviews. We also heard very positive comments from vendors we work with,” said Kasbohm. “Scalability was a factor we looked very closely at. When we compared the ExaGrid and Data Domain systems, we felt that the ExaGrid was more scalable because we can easily expand the system to add both capacity and performance without a forklift upgrade.”
ExaGrid’s appliance models can be mixed and matched into a single scale-out system allowing a full backup of up to 2.7PB with a combined ingest rate of 488TB/hr, in a single system. The appliances automatically join the scale-out system. Each appliance includes the appropriate amount of processor, memory, disk, and bandwidth for the data size. By adding compute with capacity, the backup window remains fixed in length as the data grows. Automatic load balancing across all repositories allows for full utilization of all appliances. Data is deduplicated into an offline repository, and additionally, data is globally deduplicated across all repositories.
Kasbohm said that another key reason the district chose the ExaGrid system was its tight integration with leading backup applications. “The ExaGrid system works with all the major backup applications, so we can choose the best solutions for our environment. We knew we wanted to continue using our existing application, Backup Exec with OST, and were easily able integrate the two products,” he said. “We recently decided that it would be more advantageous to back up our 77 virtual machines to Veeam. Because the ExaGrid supports it, it’ll be easy to do.”